Budget Fixes Return Instrument Pair to NASA's Mars Science Laboratory

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory plans to launch in 2009. The rover is to be powered by nuclear generator (not shown) and will have extensive mobility across the red planet. ImageCredit: NASA/JPL/Corby Waste

WASHINGTON - Two instruments that were cast off NASA's Mars
Science Laboratory for being over budget have earned their way back onto
the mission, which is scheduled for an August 2009 launch, according to the U.S. space agency's science chief.

NASA
announced in September that it was scaling back some of Mars
Science Laboratory's capabilities in order to keep the $1.7 billion rover
mission on track.

Seeking
to avoid writing another $75 million check for the already over-budget mission,
NASA scuttled a descent camera designed to capture color video of the
approaching martian surface and refused to provide any money beyond 2007 for Chem-Cam,
a laser instrument that has exceeded its budget by 70 percent.

But
Alan Stern, NASA's associate administrator for science, told Space News
that the Chem-Cam and the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) programs have since found
solutions to their budget quandaries and were back on the manifest.

"When
Chem-Cam and MARDI figured out that we really meant that MARDI wasn't going to
fly and Chem-Cam wasn't getting any more money, they came back to us with a way
to do it without any significant money from us," Stern said in an
interview.

In
the case of MARDI, the camera's designer and principal investigator, Mike Malin
of San Diego-based Malin Space Systems, offered to finish the instrument at his
own expense. NASA plans to pay for installing MARDI aboard the Mars Science
Laboratory using money it had planned to give Malin to process and analyze
imagery from an identical camera launched aboard the Mars
Phoenix Lander this summer.

Those
funds are no longer needed, Stern said, due to a data-handling problem
discovered shortly before launch that will limit Phoenix to taking just one
picture with the camera. "The combination of him finishing on his own dime
and giving back the Phoenix money ended up costing us nothing for flying MARDI,
so of course we will do it," Stern said.

The
Chem-Cam team, led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, also
dug deep to solve its budget problems. The instrument emerged from the Mars
Science Laboratory's critical design review more than 70 percent over budget
and still in need of $2.5 million to finish development and $1.3 million
for integration with the rover

Stern
pledged to find the money for integration if the team could figure a way to
finish the Chem-Cam without extra funding from NASA.

The
Chem-Cam team solved $1.5 million of its budget problem through increased
contributions from its French colleagues and by simplifying its work plan -
Stern described it as "separating the icing from the cake in terms of the
work to go."

The
director of Los Alamos, meanwhile, agreed to back his principal investigator
with about $600,000. "This left an unfunded amount of about
$400,000," Stern said. "I declared victory. We had succeeded in
eliminating over 80 percent of the problem."

Stern
said he plans to cover the cost of Chem-Cam's integration out of some $2
million NASA's Science Mission Directorate saved by getting Phoenix off at the
very start of its three-week launch window.